Recently I discovered a beautiful commercial from Dtac, a Thai mobile phone operator. The commercial’s title is “Disconnect to connect” and shows people too busy with their phones to notice the people around them. The commercial then shows what happens if you turn off your phone and see the world around you. Very nice message from a company who obviously benefits from keeping you on your phone.
Could this message by this company, which is the Norwegian company Telenor, created in a Thai/Norwegian cultural setting have been created elsewhere?
The Thai culture values relationships highly (it is a Collectivistic culture). The Norwegian culture of which the mother company Telenor is strongly influenced by, has a preference for creating a environment where people feel being looked after. This can be explained by Norway’s low score on Hofstede’s dimension Femininity. The commercial is very appealing to many judging by the type of positive reactions it has on the web. I do believe it reaches more than those that share similar cultural values as the Thai and Norwegians.
Gigi de Groot 